“Poetic Justice” Harker
“Poetic Justice”
Harker
Pressing my trembling hands against the rough surface of my worktable, I surveyed my domain.
A forest of gourd-shaped copper vessels and glass tubes.
Iron implements of every sort. Crucibles, mortar, and bellows.
Most critically, the small distillation furnace that transmuted an herb-infused Walachian wine into a lifesaving quintessence.
The chapel on the rock was built with the idea that a religious man would make his home here.
It was a symbol of my ancestor’s piety and devotion to the church.
He had not designed it to accommodate a family.
When my father was alive, the lower floor served as both dining and sitting room, while the upper floor was divided between sleeping chamber and his study.
I now used the latter for my laboratory.
For many long years it had been my sanctuary, which perhaps was why I’d come directly here from The Magpie—and Mina Penrose. My venture into the village had shaken me to my core. I wanted the steadying influence of my work.
Though I had just completed a distillation, I began gathering the components of the apparatus to begin again. My movements were jerky, and a glass alembic slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor.
I squeezed my eyes shut and raked a hand through my hair.
Harker Tregarrick, you’re a fool.
I had told myself it was right to go there, breaking my family vow never to step foot in the village except in direst need. Because shutting myself away here, though it had kept me safe for many decades, could now bring danger.
There would be rumors about Mr. Roscoe—my solicitor, found at the edge of my estate. Rumors that, if history was any guide, could so easily turn to shouting and calls for blood.
Poetic justice. In many ways, it would be easier to just let it happen.
In the year of our Lord 1854, people still feared Roche Rock.
Most of them just couldn’t remember why.
Old stories of a wolf that prowled the estate, preying on solitary travelers who chanced to wander too close.
The authorities would seek a more rational explanation, but all of it would still come back to me, and continuing to hide myself in Roche Chapel would only make things worse.
I must allow them to see me as a man before they could make me into a monster (even if that’s exactly what I was).
This was the story I’d told myself before donning my newest, most modern suit of clothes and stepping off the estate for the first time in many years.
And I believed in my decision until the person I most feared on this earth—a tormentor I knew well, though only by her meadowsweet scent—appeared before me in a smocked blue blouse and faded plaid muslin skirt that had probably once been the same color as her hair.
How fitting that it was red.
Despite my alchemical elixir, my sluggish heart had hammered. The bloodlust had arced within me, and the slight rhythmic motion at her throat—I could hear, feel, and almost taste it. Had we met anywhere other than a crowded tearoom, she would never have survived.
I had not felt the thirst so powerfully since the earliest days of my change, when I’d been made prisoner in this tower for the protection of every beating heart in the parish. That time was shrouded in the red fog of my bloodlust, and to this day I was haunted by the not-remembering.
Mina Penrose was enough to chase me back to my tower, never again to emerge.
Yet that option was closed to me now.